Piper: On Jesus Christ as Denouement in the Theater of God

This is so good.

A Somewhat Interesting Converation with Supposed Atheists

. . . in the comments under this blog post.

I Have No Greater Joy . . .

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth (3 John 4).

Yesterday evening while our family was eating supper, my wife and I were discussing our desire for a young lady we know to do the right thing (being careful not to mention her by name in front of the children of course). This young lady does the right thing when around certain people and doesn't when around others. As we were talking my four year old son spoke up and said, "She should do the right thing because God sees everything." This was a moment of great joy for me. My son just memorized this as part of a catechism answer a few weeks ago. I smiled and agreed with him. Then we had a wonderful little conversation about God's omniscience and omnipotence. He was a little perplexed when he began to think about how God could see everything all the time. I explained that he could do that because he is God. I also explained that, because God sees everything and he is our heavenly Father who loves us, we don't ever have to fear that someone or something might sneak past God to hurt us or that he might make a mistake and hurt us. God is good to us all the time because he is all-powerful and all-knowing.

My wife and I began catechizing our son a little more than a year ago. Lately we've been doing it even more rigorously as part of our family worship time. Here's what that looks like:

1. I announce that we are about to have family worship time.
2. My wife, my son (4 years old), my daughter (2 years old), and I gather on the carpeted floor of our living room with three books: (1) the Bible, (2) the Trinity Hymnal, and (3) First Catechism: Teaching Children Bible Truths (pictured above).
   
3. I read a Scripture passage and then explain and apply it to our lives. (5-7 minutes)
4. We recite creeds and confessions (2 min.)
   
5. We sing two hymns. Jesus Loves Me is our favorite. Sometimes we use the Net Hymnal for musical accompaniment. This is my daughters favorite time. When we begin to sing she crawls onto my outstretched legs and sways back and forth while intermittently smiling, laughing, and humming the tune along with us. ( 8-10 min.)
6. We pray together. Sometimes I simply lead us in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Other times we pray extemporaneously with special attention to expressing our thankfulness for what we have learned from God's Word. Usually my son begins. I coach him along the way. Then my wife will pray. Then I will pray. (3-5 min.)
   
7. I lead my son in memorizing the catechism. When he gets a few new answers memorized, I give him (and my daughter) a piece of candy. He loves it. (8-10 min.)
8. We sing the doxology. (1 min.)

I suppose we usually spend a total of 25-35 minutes in family worship time every Sunday afternoon, Monday evening (which is also our new game night!), and Thursday evening. We are still relatively new to this. Neither my wife nor I was raised in a family that worshiped together like this. I just started reading Terry Johnson's The Family Worship Book: A Resource for Family Devotions today. It is very good. Perhaps I will make a few changes to our family worship schedule after reading it.

Anyone else out there have a family worship time? If so, what does it look like?

In the Care of the Good Shepherd

I'm looking forward to this new book by Iain D. Campbell. Derek Thomas, John E. Richards Professor of Theology, RTS (Jackson); Minister of Teaching, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson Mississippi; Editorial Director, Reformation21.org writes:

Iain D. Campbell’s exposition of the Psalm 23 is masterful, both exegetically and pastorally. Reminiscent of the late Douglas MacMillan’s work on this psalm, Dr. Campbell’s adds significantly to our appreciation of the psalm, indeed under his guidance we are led to behold new vistas of greener pastures and still waters. Sure-footed, expository genius of a rare kind.

The Two Strong Supports of All Social Order

In "Westminster Spirituality" from The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century, vol. 2, Rev. Dr. David W. Hall writes:

Historian William H. Roberts, commemorating the spiritual disciplines of the [Westminster] divines a hundred years ago made this correlation:

The family and the Sabbath! The two institutions of Eden which survived the wreck of the fall! They are the two strong supports of all social order, the Jachin and Boaz upon which human society rests. Let them be disintegrated and social chaos inevitably follows. These two institutions our venerable Standards exalt as no others do. For their maintenance the Presbyterian Church has always stood . . . they have been handed down to us as a precious legacy from God-fearing ancestors . . . a high trust, to be passed on in unimpaired integrity to generations yet to come. . . . These two springs of blessing have been opened for us, at unspeakable cost, by hearts and hands long stilled in death. We have drunk from them and been refreshed. . . . There are no institutions in our holy religion which the great enemy of all good is attacking today with more persistent or subtle malignity and zeal (138-39).

Interestingly, these two creation ordinances correspond to the two fundamental aspects of the world: space and time. The family, or more specifically marriage, regulates humanity's use of space, "And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Gen. 1:28a). The Sabbath, on the other hand, regulates man's use of time, "So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation" (Gen. 2:3).

Attempted Axiom: On Hair Splitting

If the unity of a hair is error, it should be split.

or more precisely . . .

If the presumed unity of a hair is error, we should recognize that it is already split. (Maybe we should call this philosophical split-ends)

God Doesn't Believe in Atheists

I read Psalm 10 during my morning meditations today. Verses 3 and 4 were particularly interesting:

For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord. In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”

Here we see that the wicked renounces the Lord and thinks "There is no God." But how can one renounce a being he doesn't know exists? He can't. Knowledge of the existence of a being must precede one's renouncing of it. The teaching of Scripture is clear. Though atheists rebelliously suppress the truth of God's existence, saying "There is no God," they nonetheless know he exists. In other words, God doesn't believe in atheists. Indeed, this is the teaching of Romans 1:18-21:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Attempted Axiom: On Self-Absorption

Self-absorption is hyper-applicationalism.

or

An unhealthy concern with self is an unhealthy concern with how everything must apply to me now.

or

Teaching the self-absorbed is first helping him to see the importance of learning and appreciating something for its own sake besides himself.

or

Guarding against self-absorption is maintaining a willingness to learn and appreciate something for its own sake besides yourself.

Derek Thomas: On Loving the Church

Here

Miscellanies 6: On Ecclesiology in NPP and FV Thought

New Perspective on Paul and Federal Vision theologies blur the distinction between the invisible and visible aspects of the church.

What is Church Government?

Last night I read Sean Lucas' new booklet (30 pages) What is Church Government? published by P&R in the Basics of the Reformed Faith Series. With arguments grounded in Scripture and further supported by church history, the Westminster Standards, and the PCA's Book of Church Order, Lucas' work is an excellent introduction, explanation, and defense of Presbyterian ecclesiology. Below are a couple excerpts.

On confessionalism and doctrinal maximalism Lucas writes:

The premise of the great confessions, such as the Westminster Standards, is that more declared truth should lead to greater unity (15).

On the visible-invisible distinction of the church Lucas writes:

There were very specific historical reasons why Presbyterian and Reformed believers thought about the church in these terms. The Roman Catholic Church argued that all those who were in good standing with the visible church--the Roman Church--were in good standing with God. They merged the visible church with the church that God alone can see in such a way as to identify the two. The result of a lost distinction between the church as God sees it and as we see it was a culture-religion followed by formalism, superstition, and the loss of vital biblical Christianity.

On the other side, the sixteenth-century Anabaptists (and modern-day Baptists) went to a different extreme. They believed that they could gain God's insight into who was truly regenerate and was truly part of God's church as God sees it. They sought to identify this universal, "invisible" church with the visible church. Their program was to "purify" the membership of the visible church so that it matched the church that God alone can see--this, of course, was the ideal of a "regenerate church membership."

In response to the Roman Catholics and the Anabaptists, Reformers such as Calvin argued that we should have "a certain charitable judgment" toward those who "by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us" (Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.8). Our own assurance of others' regeneration is not necessary. They also spoke of a universal church, invisible to us, in order to make place for the reality that our knowledge of others' faith and standing with God does not match God's own knowledge (10-11).

R. Scott Clark: On the Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul

Here

Thomas Watson: On Being Satisfied with God

Among other things, lately I've been reading Thomas Watson's A Body of Divinity on Sunday afternoons. This was the first book published by The Banner of Truth Trust back in 1958. I highly recommend it. Watson must have been an excellent preacher. Gems pour from the tip of his pen like water from a fountain. Here's one I found today:

We may go with the bee from flower to flower, but we shall never have full satisfaction till we come to the infinite God (53).

The Thorny Heart

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful (Matt. 13:22).

I remember the first meeting I ever had with my Senior Pastor at Twin Oaks Presbyterian. Along the way we found ourselves discussing the negative characteristics we'd observed in local churches. The primary characteristic I mentioned was the thorny heart from Jesus' parable of the sower (Matt. 13:1-9, 18-23).

The thorny heart is a lesson in irony, a sort of divine poetic justice. It teaches us that those who are given much in this life in terms of material resources suffer the ever-present threat of spiritual impoverishment. I am convinced that this is the overriding negative characteristic in my context (i.e. upper-middle class American suburbia). It is the thing with which I most often find myself struggling both within the church and within myself.

Preparing to teach my junior high small group tonight on the parable of the sower, I ran across this excellent excerpt from Rev. Terry Johnson, pastor of historic Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, GA:

The modern world has, in many ways, become a constant amusement park. We are incessantly being entertained--in our homes (of course), but also in our cars, at the airport, in the elevator, even between plays at football games. The thirty seconds between plays of National Football League games is now filled with pounding music, dancing girls, and flashing images on video screens. Apparently there mustn't be even a moment that passes that is not filled with multiple amusements. The ubiquitous T.V. screen now can be found above checkout lines in grocery stores, in banks, and in our automobiles.

Jesus' parable is designed to provoke questions and self-examination. Could it be that we are so busy with the concerns and pleasures of this life that we have little time for the things of God, and little interest? Even among strong, believing people, these days it is difficult to hold a congregation [and I might add a youth group] together because of the distractions that the world offers. Spiritual life is being choked out of us. Christian people are being seduced. Perhaps too much of the love of the world is still in us (1 John 2:15; James 4:4). We need to pull out the weeds. Sadly we are victims of the prosperous times in which we live and the abundance of our resources. We must pull out the weeds and get rid of any and everything that distracts us from the fruitful reception of God's word (The Parables of Jesus: Entering, Growing, Living, and Finishing in God's Kingdom, 52-53).

On the New Calvinists

Here are some very interesting videos from the Religious Newswriters Association in Minneapolis, MN Sept. 11, 2009. John Piper did an excellent job of explaining the gist of the movement called young, restless, and reformed or "new" Calvinism and in the process reaffirmed why I will always consider him one of my pastoral-theological heroes.

Truth is Worth the Risk

What is heresy and how is it different from other kinds of theological error? How do I keep myself and others within my sphere of influence from theological error without becoming sidetracked by an attitude of perverse negativity? As a new pastor on the front lines of ministry, I found Martin Downes' new book Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church to be a welcome help in answering these and many other crucial ministerial questions. Interviewees include Carl Trueman, Tom Schreiner, Michael Horton, Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Greg Beale, Derek Thomas, R. Scott Clark, Tom Ascol, Guy Waters, Kim Riddlebarger, Ron Gleason, Sean Michael Lucas, Iain D. Campbell, Gary L. W. Johnshon, Conrad Mbewe, Geoffrey Thomas, Joel Beeke, Robert Peterson, and Michael Ovey. Filled with the precision of rigorous scholarship as well as the tenderness of pastoral wisdom, read it and be convinced that truth is worth the risk.

The Church's Responsibility for Educating Children

Martin Downes has posted an interesting article on the church's responsibility for educating children. It begins:

The direct responsibility of educating children in the Christian faith is given by God not to Sunday schools but to parents. In order for this to happen the Church's responsibility to parents is to teach them all that God requires of them as parents, and all that they must do to bring their children up in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

Richard Gaffin: Critiquing Calvin's View of New Testament Sabbath Remembrance as Spiritual Rest

In Calvin and the Sabbath: The Controversy of Applying the Fourth Commandment, Dr. Richard Gaffin writes:

I begin with a consideration drawn from the nature of the Decalogue. The heart of the fourth commandment, Calvin says repeatedly, is the injunction to practice spiritual rest. Spiritual rest, he likewise makes abundantly clear, is perpetual cessation from sin so that God may perform his sanctifying work in us.

It is difficult to see any real difference between this notion of spiritual rest and Jesus' teaching, consonant with the rest of Scripture, about the summary of the whole law, including the ten commandments (e.g. Matt. 22:35-40). For Calvin, spiritual rest is ceasing from sin, and the positive side of such cessation is loving "the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind ... and ... your neighbor as yourself."

But according to the uniform teaching of Scripture, the Decalogue is a detailed declaration of God's law, the explicit kind of enunciation that sinners need, more generally summarized by the command to love God and neighbor. In other words, the particular elements of the Decalogue are related to Christ's love summary as species to genus, specific aspects to integrating the whole.

Consequently, to attribute to any one of the ten commandments, the comprehensive force that properly belongs to Christ's summary effectively deprives that particular commandment of its intended place in the Decalogue. That is precisely what happens when Calvin discusses the fourth commandment. The notion of spiritual rest he finds there gives to it a basic force that it cannot have biblically; a part of the Decalogue receives meaning divinely intended for the whole. Jonathan Edwards, for one, already grasped this point. In commenting on Calvin's views, he says, "And if [the fourth commandment] stands in force now only as signifying a spiritual, Christian rest, and holy behavior at all times, it doth not remain as one of the ten commandments, but as a summary of all the commandments."

It remains perplexing how Calvin, who elsewhere correctly formulates the relation of each element of the Decalogue to Christ's summary, could have failed to observe that distinction in discussing the fourth commandment. At any rate, he plainly does give it a force that properly belongs only to a summary of the Decalogue. He has overlooked its specific place in God's law and, consequently, missed its true meaning (145-46).

A. A. Hodge: On Creeds and Confessions

I often study various Westminster Confession of Faith commentaries preparing to teach. One that has been very useful is Archibald Alexander Hodge's The Confession of Faith, which was first published in 1869 (The Banner of Truth Trust has since offered a reprint). I've used Hodge's work in my studies over the last couple of years, but I just read his introduction and found this gem:

While, however, the Scriptures are from God, the understanding of them belongs to the part of men. Men must interpret to the best of their ability each particular part of Scripture separately, and then combine all that the Scriptures teach upon every subject into a consistent whole, and then adjust their teachings upon different subjects in mutual consistency as parts of a harmonious system. Every student of the Bible must do this; and all make it obvious that they do it, by the terms they use in their prayers and religious discourse, whether they admit or deny the propriety of human creeds and confessions. If they refuse the assistance afforded by the statements of doctrine slowly elaborated and defined by the Church, they must make out their own creed by their own unaided wisdom. The real question is not, as often pretended, between the Word of God and the creed of man, but between the tried and proved faith of the collective body of God's people, and the private judgment and the unassisted wisdom of the repudiator of creeds.

I haven't studied the Princetonians much but am looking forward to doing it soon. Any suggestions on where to start?

D. Jeffrey Bingham: "Once for All"

Is there an impending collapse of historic evangelicalism?

Here is an excellent message entitled "Once for All" delivered by Dr. D. Jeffrey Bingham, Church Historian, Department Chair and Professor of Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Bingham teaches:

When the faith is least welcome, it is most needed. In your churches when doctrine seems least appealing, doctrine is most needed. When your communities want to dress the faith up in a costume, you need to leave it in its rags. Because to pervert the faith is to pervert yourselves, and it is to pervert your communities.

Is Calvinism Fundamentally Transformationalistic?

Darryl Hart explores this question here.

Attempted Axiom: On Faith and Pride

Some time back I posted an attempted axiom on faith and pride reading: Pride is the biggest mountain faith ever moved.

I think its inversion is just as axiomatic (and ironic):

Faith (like a little insignificant mustard seed) is the biggest mountain pride ever moved.

The Most Interesting Lunch I've had in a While

Today I had lunch with a couple of my ninth grade students from the TOPC youth group. They attend a classical christian school. The lunch began and ended with debate. It was great! Of course, my students and I are Presbyterian and Reformed. Another student who ate with us was Baptist and another was Lutheran. The Lutheran student asked one of my guys whether baptism saves, pointing to 1 Peter 3:18-22:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

To the question "Does baptism save?" Presbyterians answer yes and no, and, although there is significant difference in understanding, Lutherans answer the same. But oftentimes we Presbyterians will begin with the no and then proceed to explain the yes. There's nothing technically wrong with that, but I think we should probably begin with the yes, since that is the explicit teaching of Scripture.

My students began with the no and never got to the yes. I'm not sure why. Of course the Lutheran fellow wanted to begin with the yes and then explain the no, so he rightly pressed 1 Pet. 3 asking, "Does baptism save? The text says it does."

Here's the way the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition answers this question:

Since baptism is a sacrament, the question can be rephrased: "How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation?" This is question 161 of the Larger Catechism. The answer reads:

The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered, but only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ, by whom they are instituted.

In other words, baptism does and does not save. It saves in the sense that it becomes an effectual means of salvation by the working of the Holy Ghost and the blessing of Christ. But it does not save in the sense that it has any power in itself or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom it is administered. In other words, baptism serves as a confirmation and strengthening of the salvation which comes to us by the working of the Holy Spirit. It confirms and strengthens our faith and assurance in the previous work of grace but does not establish or create it.

But given that answer, another question comes to the fore. Does the Holy Spirit do his saving work through the sacrament every time it is administered? This question can be broken down into three even more precise questions: (1) Does the Spirit always work salvifically at the moment of the observance of the sacrament? (2) If not, does the Spirit always work salvifically with the observance of the sacrament so that all who are baptized are at some point in time saved? and (3) Is there any hope of salvation apart from baptism? Let's take them one at a time.

First, does the Spirit always work salvifically at the moment of the observance of the sacrament? Here we confess, "No, he does not."

The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in his appointed time (WCF 28.6).

Second, does the Spirit always work salvifically with the observance of the sacrament so that all who are baptized are at some point in time saved? Here we confess, "No, he does not."

Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that . . . all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated (WCF 28.5).

Third, is there any hope of salvation apart from baptism? Here we confess "Yes, there is."

Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it . . . (WCF 28.5)

So, does baptism save? Yes and no. It is an effectual means of salvation in the sense that it confirms and strengthens the faith and assurance in the gracious work of the Spirit in the elect. It is not an effectual means of salvation in the sense that it creates the gracious work of the Spirit in the elect.

The Marrow of Modern Divinity

Don’t miss the reprint of the classic puritan work The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Martin Downes has posted some blurbs on the book here.

Sunday School Schedule

I recently developed the basic outline of a four-year teaching schedule based on the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) for my Senior High Sunday School class. Here it is:

Year One
Fall- Doctrine of Scripture (WCF 1)
Spring- Doctrine of God (WCF 2-5)
Year Two
Fall-Doctrine of Man (WCF 6-7)
Spring- Doctrine of Christ (WCF 8)
Year Three
Fall- Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Part 1) (WCF 9-13)
Spring- Doctrine of Holy Spirit (Part 2) (WCF 14-19)
Year Four
Fall- Doctrine of the Church (Part 1) (WCF 20-24)
Spring- Doctrine of the Church (Part 2) (WCF 25-33)

I've also put together our first-year Fall schedule on the Doctrine of Scripture:

1. Introduction to Confessionalism and the WCF (Sept. 13)
2. Doctrine of Scripture: Introduction (Sept. 20)
3. Doctrine of Scripture: Divine Revelation (1.1a) (Sept. 27)
4. Doctrine of Scripture: Necessity (1.1b) (Oct. 4)
5. Doctrine of Scripture: Inspiration and Canonicity (1.2-3) (Oct. 11)
6. Doctrine of Scripture: Authority and Infallibility (1.4) (Oct. 18)
7. Doctrine of Scripture: Sufficiency (1.6a) (Oct. 25)
8. Doctrine of Scripture: Obscurity (1.6b) (Nov. 1)
9. Doctrine of Scripture: Clarity (1.7) (Nov. 8)
10. Doctrine of Scripture: Purity (1.8) (Nov. 15)
11. Doctrine of Scripture: Interpretation (1.9) (Nov. 22)
12. Doctrine of Scripture: Primacy (1.10) (Nov. 29)
13. Doctrine of Scripture: Conclusion (Dec. 6)
    

Attempted Axiom: On Doctrinal Maximalism

Only those who believe in doctrinal maximalism should be semper reformanda (i.e. always reforming).

Attempted Axiom: On Anarchy

A little anarchy always hurts everybody.

Attempted Axiom: On Preaching the Accomplishment and Application of Redemption

Preaching the accomplishment of redemption (historia salutis) without its application (ordo salutis) is hypocrisy; preaching the application of redemption (ordo salutis) without its accomplishment (historia salutis) is futility.

SBTS Panel: N.T. Wright on Justification

This is excellent. Listen for the quotes from Martin Luther. They are so rich.

[HT: JT]